Dead End (12 page)

15

Annie topped off the tank of the rented Ford Taurus sedan at the station advertised as the last gas for 167 miles. She had started out from the airport with a full tank, but wasn’t sure how far she’d have to drive to find Melissa Lowery and figured that “Last Gas” sign must have been put there for a reason.

Mariana Gray,
she corrected herself. She’d have to assume that Melissa was known around West Priest as Mariana Gray.

The last road sign told her that Priest lay twenty-four miles up the road, but Annie had driven in the west before and had found that sometimes the mileages weren’t exactly accurate. It appeared from the map she’d picked up at the airport that West Priest lay just a few miles beyond Priest. She should be able to make the drive in well under an hour.

She was pleased to find herself arriving at Priest a mere forty minutes later. She went straight to the post office, where she was given directions that would take her three miles outside of town on Old Fort Road. When she reached West Priest, the postmistress assured her, she’d know it.

The road between the two towns consisted of two skinny lanes of flat gravel with no shoulder on either side. The scenery, however, made it worth the caution one was forced to take in maneuvering the roadway. In the distance rose the East Front of the Continental Divide, with its scraggy plateaus and rolling grassy hills. Annie stopped once, pulling off onto the edge of the hard-earthed field to photograph the landscape. She would want to share its beauty with Evan, and knew words alone could not do it justice.

The tiny town of West Priest grew on both sides of the highway, two blocks in either direction from the intersection with Main Street, which, as its name implied, was the primary thoroughfare, with one bank and three churches. A post office shared a white clapboard building with an insurance agent and a flower shop. Next door a sign advertised guns and ammunition, and across the street was a general store with a “Help Wanted” sign in the window.

Annie parked in front of the post office and, as she’d done in Priest, asked directions from the sixtysomething man behind the counter.

“I’m looking for Big Creek Road,” Annie told the postal clerk.

“South or North?” the man asked.

“I don’t know.” Annie frowned and searched her pockets for the paper upon which Will had written Melissa’s address. “It only says Big Creek Road.”

“Who you looking for?”

“Mel—” She corrected herself: “Mariana Gray.”

“She’s out on East Big Creek.”

“I thought you said South or North.” Annie frowned again. “How could it be East, too?”

“Different creek.” He returned to whatever it was he’d been doing when she came in. To Annie, it looked as if he’d been counting stamps.

“Could I get directions?”

“Not from me.” He shook his head. “We’re not allowed to give out anyone’s address.”

“You’re not giving me the address,” Annie said patiently. “I have the address. You only have to tell me how to get there.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to do that. You could probably get directions from Sullivan’s, though. Someone there will know.”

“Sullivan’s?”

“Little restaurant around the corner. Only restaurant in town.”

“Thanks.”

Sullivan’s was, as promised, just around the corner. Set in a little building made of ugly rough stone, it had a tinny bell that rang when the door was opened and a chalkboard right inside listing the day’s specials. Annie took a table and ordered the soup of the day—black bean—and a small salad. The waitress appeared to be assessing her—hair to clothes to jewelry—even as she took the order.

“By the way, the man at the post office told me you might know how I could get to Mariana Gray’s place,” Annie said when the waitress returned with her salad, an uninspired pile of lettuce adorned with three ragged slices of cucumber and some anemic-looking tomatoes.

“You a friend of hers?”

“Friend of a friend. I know she’s on Big Creek Road, but I don’t know the address.”

“Out there, there are no addresses, not like we have here in town.”

“How do I know which house is hers?”

The waitress continued her silent evaluation, and apparently decided Annie looked harmless enough.

“To get to Mariana’s place, you just go straight back there at the intersection, then go right at the bridge, then straight for about four, five miles. Mariana’s is the house you come to on the left side of the road.”

“Thanks.”

“Welcome. You ready for your soup?”

Annie nodded, and checked her voice mail for messages while she waited for the soup to arrive. She hoped it would prove to be tastier than the salad had been.

It was excellent, a rich spicy broth filled with dark beans, tomatoes, small pieces of beef, and topped with a dollop of sour cream. After three days of hotel food, Annie savored every spoonful.

She bought a Diet Coke in a to-go container and a brownie to take with her in the car. On the way out of town, she passed the motel where she’d made reservations for that night. She debated whether or not to stop, then decided against it. She was anxious to meet Melissa, curious to see what the woman remembered and what light, if any, she could shed on Dylan’s death.

Melissa Lowery’s mailbox stood at the end of a wide driveway that cut through a dusty front lawn and bore the name
GRAY
in blue letters that looked hand-painted. Wavy green vines bearing yellow flowers wrapped around the white metal box. A double garage sat off to the left by itself, and Annie walked over to peek through the windows. A dark blue Ford Explorer was parked inside next to a John Deere riding mower and a workbench upon which rested some garden tools. A hoe stood next to the bench, and a collection of various shovels leaned against the side wall. Behind the garage was a barn that appeared to have seen better days, and a small empty paddock. Across the back of the property ran a dense hedgerow, and Annie wondered as she walked back to the house if it marked the back boundary. If so, depending on how far to either side the property stretched, this would give Melissa several acres.

The house itself had once been painted yellow, but over the years had faded to a pale dull ivory. There were no plants around the foundation, but a pot of dark pink begonias stood on the bottom step of the concrete porch that led to the front door. Annie looked for a doorbell, but there was none, so she knocked instead. When there was no response, she knocked again, louder.

Leaning her ear to the door, she listened for sounds of life. All she could hear was a faint sort of humming. It took a moment before the sound registered with her. She stepped back from the door, then peered into the nearest window. Inside, the glass was covered with flies.

“Oh God, no . . .”

She reached for her phone and dialed 911.

The sheriff arrived in less than ten minutes. It wasn’t every day he got a phone call from someone identifying themselves as an FBI agent who was standing on the front porch of a house that appeared to be filled with blowflies. They both knew what that most likely meant.

“I take it you didn’t go inside,” Sheriff Al Brody said as he got out of his car.

“No. If there’s a body in there, as I suspect there might be, it could be a crime scene.”

“Do you mind showing me some identification?” he asked.

Annie dug in her purse and pulled out her badge as he reached for the doorknob. “You must suspect it, too, or you wouldn’t have gotten out here so quickly.”

“Let’s just say I was intrigued.” He glanced at her credential, appeared satisfied, then turned the knob.

The door did not open. “Let me run around back, see if something’s open back there . . .”

A minute or two later, Brody opened the front door from the inside, holding a hand over his mouth.

“Do you have something to cover my shoes with? Paper boots, maybe?” she asked.

“Not with me. You sure you want to come in? This ain’t pretty,” he told Annie, and blocked her entry into the house.

“It never is.” She stepped inside, careful to watch where she walked lest she step on evidence.

“Well, I guess this won’t be the first time you’ve seen a body after the maggots have gotten to it.” Brody moved to the left to permit her to pass.

“Not by a long shot.”

“She’s in there, between the living room and the dining room.” He followed her, his hand still covering his nose and mouth. “At least, I’m assuming it’s a she, going by all that hair. It can be tough to tell sometimes. I’ve known men with long hair, but none who wore pretty little flower barrettes. You know whose place this is?”

“She was going by the name Mariana Gray.” Annie knelt a foot from the body and studied it carefully, looking past the writhing mass that was the second generation of maggots and focusing on searching for an obvious cause of death.

“Going by?”

“Her real name is Melissa Lowery. She’s a former FBI agent. At least, I’m assuming that’s who she is. You’re going to need to confirm that.” Annie looked up at him. “What do you think, two weeks, give or take?”

“Judging by the condition of the body, yeah, I’d say she’s been dead around two weeks.”

The body was dressed in jeans and a red sweatshirt worn over a white cotton turtleneck. A thin gold bracelet circled what was left of her right wrist, and about her neck hung a small bezel-set diamond on a gold chain. On the third finger of her left hand was a wide gold ring. As the sheriff had noted, her long brown hair was held up on one side in a barrette fashioned out of a yellow silk flower.

“Driver’s license says Mariana Gray.” Brody stood in the doorway holding a tan leather wallet.

“There’s no sign of blood,” Annie murmured to herself as much as to the sheriff. “No sign of trauma to the head that I can see, but with all the insect activity, it’s going to take an autopsy to determine cause of death.”

She looked up at Brody and asked, “How’s your M.E.?”

“He’s good. He’s real good.” He reached in his pocket for his phone. “And I guess now’s as good a time as any to bring him in. I’ll be right back, Dr. McCall. I’m going to have to step outside for some better reception. I need to call in the troops.”

Alone with what was left of the woman she assumed was Melissa Lowery, Annie tried to ignore what part her inquiries into the woman’s whereabouts might have played in her death.

We don’t know if she was murdered, Annie silently protested against the first twinges of guilt. She could have been ill, she could have had . . .

What? Annie asked herself. What could she have had that might have caused her to die at the same time as I was looking for her? How coincidental could it be?

Annie just hadn’t seen enough true coincidences in her life to start believing in them now.

She stood and began to take note of her surroundings. The house was small but neat and well kept, the walls freshly painted, the furniture relatively new. She walked from one room to the next and found the entire house had a just-decorated feel to it. However long Melissa had been in Montana, she’d only just recently started to feather her nest.

A few family photos stood in a line across the mantel over the living-room fireplace. The same young, dark-haired woman appeared in several of them, and Annie thought that might be Melissa. In one photo, she appeared with a younger woman and an older man, a large black dog on the ground in front of them. In another, there was just her and the dog. In a third, she sat on a large outcropping of rock, with two other young women, all of whom bore a strong resemblance. Sisters, maybe, Annie thought. The older man might be the dad.

Annie went into the living room and straight to the dark green leather bag that had spilled from a chair onto the floor. She looked over the contents—makeup case, cell phone, a small address book, several keys on a brass chain from which a large letter
M
dangled. Her fingers itched to pick up the address book and the phone, but she hesitated, not wanting to add her prints to the surface or to smudge those already there.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of rubber gloves I could borrow, do you?” she asked Sheriff Brody when he came back into the house.

“I might have, in the trunk. I can check,” he said, but made no attempt to go back outside to his car.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me, Sheriff Brody?” Annie stood and folded her arms across her chest.

“I’m wondering what your interest is here. What brought you here. What business you had with Ms. Gray. She wasn’t a friend of yours, judging by your reaction.” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve had no visible emotional reaction to seeing her body, the way you would if you knew the deceased. So it’s got me wondering why you’re here.”

“Agent Lowery was involved in an operation that took place a few years back. Recently, some questions about the operation itself have come up, and in reviewing the file, it was discovered that the report she wrote is missing. I needed to ask her a few questions about what was in the report.”

He nodded slowly, as if mulling over the information.

“It just occurred to someone in the FBI that her report was missing? After a couple of years?”

“I don’t know when the report went missing.”

“And you came all the way out here to ask her about it?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just call her?”

“I had a presentation to give in Seattle this week, so I thought I’d make a stopover and speak with her in person.”

He went silent again, thinking it through.

“Still seems like a long way to come, when a phone call would have gotten you the same information.”

He paused, as if waiting for her comment. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Unless for some reason you thought she wouldn’t speak to you.”

“There’s a good chance she may not have,” Annie told him.

“What are you basing that on?”

“She’s gone to great lengths to change her identity. You don’t go to all that trouble unless you don’t want to be found.”

“Maybe she was being stalked. Maybe she just needed some peace and quiet.” He leaned back against the doorjamb. “I grew up back east. Can’t say I’d blame anyone who felt like they needed to escape.”